Consumers are very concerned in ‘‘Protected Designation of Origin” (PDO) products, namely meat, since they associate these prod-
ucts to quality and healthy foods. Thus, it is necessary to implement analytical methodologies that could assure consumers about the
products they purchase. Since this kind of meat is usually sold with no information concerning cattle sex, age and slaughter season, these
characteristics were intentionally not taken into account. In this study, two Portugueses PDO bovine breeds (Mirandesa and Barrosa˜ )
and two production sub-systems (traditional and organic farming) were studied during a two-year period. Statistical analysis showed that
production system and breed had a signiﬁcant eﬀect on the overall raw meat fatty acids (FA) content. Besides, the FA proﬁles could be
used as an eﬀective tool to diﬀerentiate the four groups studied allowing a 100% correct classiﬁcation. The meat FA content was also
correlated with the relative importance of the animal feeding stuﬀ area.